Mural Arts/Tyler Hartranft Project: Neal Santos: MLK Day video and photos

Friday, February 22, 2008

Neal Santos: MLK Day video and photos

This is a link to a piece by Neal Santos, a Temple student, photographed and recorded on the kick off day for the project: February 22nd, the Martin Luther King Day of Service.

www.nealsantos.com/mural/index.html

Photographs taken by Neal on that day can be found on this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neali0o/sets/72157603783970517/

Neal has also documented the area and community surrounding Hartranft. Photos from the Fairhill Apartments, where many Hartranft students live:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neali0o/sets/72157604826881612/

The Ebenezer Baptist Church, led by Reverend Payne:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neali0o/sets/72157604525120108/

The streets in the neighborhood:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neali0o/sets/72157604347644901/

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About this project

-How did the mural project at Hartranft come about?

Having worked with Mural Arts’ Mural Corps program on 2 large community projects in the past, after a 2 year break, we were eager to collaborate again. We were interested in a site that was not far from Temple’s Main Campus. Jane Golden, Shari Hersh and I spent an afternoon in a car driving around North Philly looking for a site. Jane is the Founder and Director of Mural Arts, and Shari is the leader of the Mural Corps program.

We were looking for a good site to address with the Ceramics Workshop class that I teach at Tyler. The class consists of both Tyler students and teens from the Mural Corps. The Mural Corps come to the Elkins Park campus after school two times a week and essentially take a college level art class alongside our majors. Together they collaborate on the design and production of a tile mosaic that is meant to benefit a community.

When we came upon Hartranft, we all thought that it was a terrific site for a project. There were a range of different types of spaces, some intimate and quiet, some more public, and amenities like their pergola - it made it interesting. It was also a site that was not in good shape. It was clear that if re-thought, it could be a beautiful and enriching site for the children at the school and the community at large.

-How are Tyler students involved? Hartranft students?
Tyler students have been involved since the project was kicked off on the Martin Luther King Day of Service this year. About 20 Tyler students and a few faculty members showed up and joined the community in helping us paint the school’s cafeteria. There were many teachers, students and staff members from the Hartranft school there that day. The community showed up in full force, and we painted the entire cafeteria by the time lunch was over.

School started for us just after that day, and the class spent several weeks wrestling with the imagery they’d propose to the community for the part of the site that they would address. The project is meant to sensitize children at the school to the nature that surrounds them in the city. It simultaneously will be attracting a wider range of nature to the site. The community had told us, through a process that spanned several community meetings, that they wanted the play area (the area the class is addressing) to follow the theme “A Tree is a City”. Trees are full of life, and this mosaic shows a broad range of birds, bugs and animals found in cities that rely on trees, and on each other. A lot of these elements are almost camouflaged, so the piece becomes a seek-and-find for the kids. The trees represented are ones found within the block that Hartranft occupies. They wanted kids to make connections between the mosaic and things that surrounded them in the neighborhood.

Both the Mural Corps and "Tyler Corps" worked together in groups on specific areas of the tree. They learned relief sculpture, and produced hundreds, if not more, of tiles, each one relating specifically to a part of the tree or to certain forms of nature. The clay was mixed at Tyler, rolled out, sculpted, fired, glazed, and taped together in a pattern to be installed in the last weeks of school. Some students continued to work through the summer on different aspects of the project.

-Is the mural complete? If not, when is the anticipated finish date?
The Hartranft project is more than just a mural. There are several components to the over-all plan, including re-painting the entire lower section of the building, planting trees and flowering shrubs around the school, creating an urban orchard and raised bed gardens, the creation of an outdoor, underground play space, the Tyler/Mural Corps/Tree is a City ceramic mosaic, a glass mosaic being done by another Mural Corps group, birds in flight will be painted onto the building by a third Mural Corps team, the entrance to the school will have a ‘Tree of Honor’, to recognize local heroes – again, done by another group of Mural Corps youth, there will be furniture and bird houses built by inmates at Graterford’s woodshop. I’m probably forgetting some items, but you get the idea. This is a very big project that hopes to enrich this site to benefit this community.

-Why is it important for students to work out in the community?

I’ve found that students are hungry to do this type of work. Many of them have been brought up with community service as part of their high school curriculum. They want to do work that’s meaningful, real and makes a difference. There are also a lot of students at Temple who come from the communities and communities like the ones that surround Main Campus.

It’s hard to argue for keeping walls that maintain the separation of communities. It’s important for educational institutions to open their doors, to allow our community out, and neighboring communities in. Our students have a lot to offer, and when they go out into real situations in neighborhoods, they meet people and encounter situations that they have a lot to learn from. Both communities ultimately benefit from the dialog. It wouldn’t happen if we just had students read a book, or work out of their studio

-What is the theme of the mural? How was this decided upon?
The over-all theme centers around ‘The Nature of the City’, where the word nature can be understood in 2 ways. We’re creating a space where kids can interact with images that make them more aware of, and more sensitive to, the nature that exists around them in the city and beyond. We’re doing things to attract more nature to the site, and we’re trying to make it more identifiable. We’re also using nature as a metaphor for a city, using the concept of interdependence, which is an essential principle in an ecosystem, and applying it to a neighborhood.

The theme arose in a number of ways. The site clearly needed greening. When I went out to the play area early in the process and asked the kids what they would want to change about it, the majority asked for shade – something I would have never thought of. After we spent a few weeks working out there, it was an obvious need. There’s no place to hide, and a bright sunny day becomes punishing without it.

We had many meetings with the teachers, staff, community members and leaders over the course of several months while developing the theme. There have been great turn outs at these meetings – from 30-60 people each time. We’re still working on the design for certain areas of the building, so we are continually going back to these community meetings to get feedback. Things continue to change as the dialog grows.

-Has Tyler worked with Hartranft on other projects in the past?

One of our Associate Deans, Brigitte Knowles, has told me that she knows Hartranft from a program that the American Institute of Architects used to run in certain Philly schools years ago. Sally Harrison, also a member of our Architecture Department, is on the Board of the Village of Arts and Humanities, which is in this community. Both Pepon Osorio and Billy Yallowitz have done work out in the community surrounding Temple. I’m not certain if they’ve engaged with individuals at Hartranft Elementary specifically, but there’s no question that there are a lot of people at Tyler, and Temple, working out in the communities that surround the campus.

Mural Arts/Tyler Hartranft Project

Friday, February 22, 2008

Neal Santos: MLK Day video and photos

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